What sort of name is the Doctor?
by Kippysaurus
Summary: After losing Rose to another dimension, the Doctor lands on a completely different world, full of pirates and marines. Will the strange pirates he meets help him overcome his grief? Hopefully comprehensible for fans of both fandoms


**Hey folks! Started this a while ago, tell me what you think about it! Enjoy~**

The Doctor was having, as one might call it, a bad day. He had just lost Rose to another dimension, without telling her his feelings. All because he had stalled! He had never been one for stalling, it made the problem worse, generally. And yet he had. Thus making him feel worse about himself.

He had then, in a fit of grief, and general uncaring, he had fiddled with everything he could on the TARDIS dashboard. She seemingly took that to mean, 'just fly wherever the hell you want, I can't do anything right now', which was pretty accurate. The TARDIS kicked into action, while he grabbed on for dear life.

To say the Whitebeard Pirates, the strongest crew on the sea in general, were surprised by a blue 'police public call' box randomly appearing in the middle of the Moby Dick would be an insult… to a pirate's capacity of panicking. Most of the crew started running about like headless chickens, and it took Whitebeard using a slither of conqueror's haki on them to shut up and stop.

Once the chaos had subsided, Whitebeard asked his first mate, and first division commander Marco to approach the box, as he was the smallest (compared to the other commanders around him), and had the highest rank. Marco stepped forward hesitantly, each step precise.

Marco knocked on what he presumed to be the front of the box. It had a notice nailed onto it which read, amongst other things, police phone box, push to open. What was a police? Or a phone, for that matter?

"Hello? Is there anyone in there?"

The Doctor silently cursed the TARDIS for bringing him somewhere that people would bother him. He had wanted to go to some place where he could look at the sunset and mourn all he had lost. But then again, he _had_ given her free reign, hadn't he?

Slowly, carefully, he went over to the door. It took him a while, as he had been crying quite a bit and as such couldn't quite see everything with perfect vision. He leant on the back of the door, debating with himself whether it was worth opening it. He decided he'd do it, in a minute. Just one minute before he faced the world outside.

"There is, but they don't really want to come out at this precise moment in time. They- I mean, I'll be out in a minute, ok?" He answered the voice on the other side. Their voice was… an eclectic blend of smooth and coarse, depending on the syllable, with an odd undertone of birdsong. It resonated in the door like his sonic did in most others, and for some reason it calmed him down a bit, while also giving the feeling that something was terribly wrong with whoever was speaking.

"That's fine, take as long as you want. Seeing as I think we'll be talking for a while through this door, I have three questions. You don't have to answer them, I'm just curious. One, what's your name; two, what is a 'police'; and three, what is a 'phone'?"

The Doctor would have laughed. Of all the things the stranger on the other side of the door might've asked, what a police and a phone were… on the one hand, rather stress-relieving, on the other, where was he? Most planets acquired both of the aforementioned objects rather quickly, and with those particular names, albeit in whatever language they happened to be speaking.

So he answered, mentally focusing only on the task and leaving the rest to be sorted out later, "My name is the Doctor, and in order to get a decent comparison I'll have to get out of the box, excuse me."

Gearing himself up, he stepped out of the safety of the TARDIS, and stepped out onto a massive wooden ship, facing a rather tall tanned, blond man with an… interesting hairstyle and bright cerulean eyes, hidden under exceptionally droopy eyelids. Behind him, a small group of very large people shifted around, as if trying to get adequate space to place their shoulders in.

The blond smiled, an easygoing thing that lit up most of his face. "Nice to meet you, Doctor. I'm Marco, and you are currently standing on the deck of the Moby Dick. Now, about the explanation of 'police' and 'phones'?"

The Doctor sniffed as subtly as possible, to gauge exactly where and when he was. It seemed it was the 27th September, 1729 on the planet Verastra, a planet made up of one continent, six seas, and at the moment a lot of pirates, meaning the equivalent of police and phones were…

"Well, a phone is essentially a den den mushi, but without the snail part. And as for the police, they're a toned-down version of the Marines, controlled by the government of wherever they happen to be, sort of like Alabasta's royal guard, in a sense? They're sort of confusing to explain. Either way, I'm not one of them. My ship once landed somewhere where these people were, adapted into this as a disguise, and then couldn't get back out of the disguise," he hadn't really noticed he had started his age-old tradition (if it could be called that, more a nervous habit really) of running his mouth until Marco placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Ok, very interesting. You'll be sure to tell me about this over dinner, yeah? The camouflage on your ship seems very interesting. In the meantime, let me introduce you to my captain, Whitebeard, or as the rest of us like to call him, Oyaji or Pops." Marco stepped aside to reveal an old man with flowing golden hair and a moustache to rival the most elaborate of Scaradian upperclassmen's.

Another fact about Whitebeard (as he didn't really want to refer to him as father in any sense, that would be too painful, too soon) was that Marco, who was about half a head taller than him, was perched on the man's chair arm looking like a small child in comparison. The Doctor felt his jaw drop. He didn't think it would undo that any time soon.

The Doctor was odd, Marco decided. A good sort of odd, but odd nonetheless.

The man wore an odd combination of a brown pinstripe suit and a greatcoat that reached down to his feet, on which he had a pair of white cloth shoes that covered his heels. It wasn't really something all too practical for being at sea, so he probably didn't spend too much time on ships. (Unbeknownst to Marco, the Doctor spent most of his time on ships, just not ones that got anywhere close to large amounts of water.)

He had explained both objects like he had the intrinsic knowledge that came from living in the Grand Line, and yet when he saw Oyaji had stopped dead. When he mentioned the Whitebeard Pirates earlier, he had seemingly no idea who they were, _and_ to know what the items were meant he couldn't have come from their planet at all.

When Marco had held eye contact for a brief moment earlier, there were simultaneously too many and too few emotions running through them to identify. But the main one he _had_ picked up on was anguish, and yet he hid it so well with the rest of his body language. Marco suspected the only reason he had noticed it was because he, as the 'big brother' of the crew (despite being 19), was better at reading people.

As he was mentally cataloguing his gathered information (what did Izo mean, he wouldn't make a good spy?), he noticed another blip. That police box, just about big enough for one him-sized being to stand in- and he'd unpack that can of worms later- _phased into existence._ Things shouldn't do that. In his long career as a pirate, he hadn't heard of a devil fruit with similar abilities at all.

Just who was this Doctor?

Said Doctor was slowly getting over the fact that Marco's captain was about four times taller than he was. In fact, for being supposedly quite tall, most people were looming over him.

"Uh, hi? I'm the Doctor, nice to meet you," he introduced, figuring it was appropriate.

"Hello, son. Marco did my introduction already. Always stealing my fun, that one," the giant said, but with no malice in his voice. The Doctor decided he quite liked him, but still wasn't quite sure on the whole 'family' thing he had going on.

"So, what brings you to this part of the world?" Whitebeard asked, seeming to want to replace 'world' with something different but not quite knowing what word to use.

The Doctor tried to form a plausible sentence, but couldn't really form one. So he did what he did best: improvised.

"Well, I'm a traveller of sorts, so I sometimes go to planets at random, to see the sights and all that. I asked the TARDIS to pick a planet, and it chose here. Uh, where exactly am I, as I'm asking?"

"Guarararara!" Whitebeard laughed, and the boat shook a little. "You'd make a fine pirate, Doctor! And as for where we are, we're about 3 miles off the island of Antara, and will be docking in about an hour and a half. You're welcome to stay with us until we do."

"Thanks for the offer, I think I'll take you up on it— ooh, look at you!"

At some point during the short time they had been speaking, Marco had disappeared and a massive fiery blue bird had turned up in his place. The Doctor leapt up to the armrest to examine the fine creature, who for its part looked mildly amused. He completely missed the expression on Whitebeard's face, which happened to be 'desperately trying not to laugh'.

He whipped out his sonic from his pocket and scanned the bird. When he first looked at the display, he had to try again just to make sure his eyes weren't deceiving him.

Nope. This bird was one of the mythical phoenix, and (and here was the concerning part) also half-human. That shouldn't have been possible, not here, not now.

(And with that thought completely discarded a rumour he had heard, centuries into the future, about a planet which once had fruits that gave special powers to those who ate them.)

"Uhh, Whitebeard? Does this bird visit often?"

"Often enough that Thatch has quite the selection of nicknames for him," Whitebeard replied, small twinkle forming in his eye. "Why?"

"Well… how to put this…" The Doctor paused, considering his words. He didn't exactly want to be thrown off the ship just yet. "The bird is a phoenix, and, uhhh, more human than they should be. By about 50%."

"I think I'd better get Marco to explain that one. Marco?" And the phoenix burst into cyan flames.

"What?"

A few seconds later, it had transformed into Marco.

"What?

"Doctor, please allow me to introduce my first mate, Marco the Phoenix."

"WHAT?"

Marco nearly doubled over in laughter when he saw the Doctor's expression changes. It had started off as curiosity, quickly changing to scepticism and slight disbelief when he had scanned him with the glowy thing. He hadn't liked that, too beepy. When he transformed, the slight had turned to utter disbelief, and a repetition of what to rival Thatch's when he found the kitchen alcohol supply almost gone after a day.

"Hello again. Thanks for the compliment, but please refrain from beeping at me again."

"Hi? What are you?" Bit blunt, but okay. He had just had part of his… worldview? Galaxyview? Universeview? Shattered.

"I ate the Tori Tori no Mi model Phoenix so now I am a phoenix-man." He went with simple first.

"Sorry, you ate what now?"

"I ate a devil fruit and it gave me the ability to turn into a phoenix, amongst other things."

"Right, okay, okay. How do those work? Because it sounds to me like a rudimentary form of DNA splicing -well, I say rudimentary but its much further ahead than most places are at this point in time- and it really is incredible for a piece of fruit, of all things—" Marco cut him off before he started another confusing ramble.

"Nobody knows how they work, but there have been rumours about Dr Vegapunk experimenting on them to find more conclusive reports."

"Oh. Okay then." The Doctor looked considerably put out. It seemed he now wanted to go find Vegapunk, which would be nice if anyone actually knew where the guy was. "So, do devil fruits just turn people into animals?"

"Well, no. To start with, there are three different types of devil fruits. Zoan, Logia and Paramecia. Zoans allow the user to turn into an animal, normally with 3 forms: human, hybrid and full animal. Mine is a mythical zoan, being a phoenix, and there are ancient zoans as well, being dinosaurs."

"Right, zoans are for animals. Got it," The Doctor said, writing in a notebook he had got from… somewhere. Marco decided not to question it.

He was about to continue, but Whitebeard got there first. "Logias can turn into elements, for example, fire, ice, lightning, smoke or stone. The fact they can turn into intangible forms makes them incredibly hard to hit -well, outside of the New World."

"The New World? Where's that?"

Marco cut back in. "We're in it now, actually. It's the term used by those who have been there for the second half of the Grand Line. It's not that common as most crews don't actually reach the New World. Now, do you want to continue on with lessons about devil fruits, or geography?"

"Oh, I thought it was just called the Grand Line. And, uh, devil fruits please?" The Doctor said, much more politely than earlier. Maybe he had just realised just how quickly he could get beaten up, so toned down his oddness in case it offended. Nice sentiment, but a bit slow on the uptake.

"Ok then. The final group is Paramecia, which pretty much encompasses everything else. For example, Jozu," he pointed at the man, "has a fruit which allows him to turn his skin into diamond. It works like a logia, but isn't. Another is the hana-hana no mi, which allows the user to sprout body parts like flowers. I've heard of one which makes the person into a jacket. They're pretty diverse." The Doctor nodded, scribbling more into his notebook.

"Any other questions?" Marco asked.

"Not for the minute, no. Any of your own?" He replied, but before anyone could ask any, Thatch ran on deck, yelled "Dinner's ready!" before racing back down into the galley.

The Doctor gave a blink of confusion, before going inside. Marco followed so the man didn't get himself lost.

**And there you have it! I'll continue this at some point!**

**Any questions, leave a review, they make my day!**


End file.
